The other day I got talking with friends about the state's sex offender registry, the online listing of people convicted of a sex crime. Some folks think it's an indispensable tool for keeping neighborhoods safe, others consider it a violation of the offender's civil liberties.

Personally - as is the case with abortion, evolution, creationism, politics and gun control - I think exactly what you think, so let's keep those letters friendly, folks.

My only real concern is that the registry doesn't list the nature of the crimes committed. The child molester is listed right alongside the guy who had the misfortune to get caught relieving himself behind a bar at closing time. These two crimes, I feel, are not the same.

But maybe I only feel that way because of something that happened to me over 30 years ago.

It was Easter vacation, and I was hiking the Bruce Trail, a rugged tract of land that begins in Queenston, Ontario and follows the Niagara Escarpment for hundreds of miles. As was often the case in those days, I was hiking alone, unmindful of bears, skunks, potential broken legs. I was young and indestructible. Nothing bad would happen to me.

This early in the year, the trail was all but deserted. I'd been hiking for three days and had not seen another living soul. My mind was in that Zen-like, tranquil place that comes only with extended periods of solitude or large quantities of good beer.

The only sounds were those of the wind shushing through the treetops and the gentle, steady susurration of Lake Huron marking its timeless rhythm against the cliffs below. I was alone in the world, an island of humanity in a vast, untrammeled wilderness.

God was in his Heaven, and all manner of things were right with the world.

Even the weather was perfect; unseasonably warm temperatures had followed me every step of the way. It was springtime in Eden, Shangri-la, Valhalla ... faultless.

The only flaw in all nature's Grand Design was, well, me. Rather, the way I smelled. After several days hiking without benefit of soap and water, I stank. Bad. Real bad. The kind of bad usually associated with the spitting, burping, unwashed, foul-mouthed, drunken cowboy who gets killed early on by the Indians in every western made since "Dances With Wolves."

I wasn't spitting or swearing, but I did stink to high heaven.

That's probably why the waterfall looked so inviting. It was a picturesque, storybook waterfall, cascading 50 feet down a tiered wall of rock and collecting in a small pool before continuing on its winding way to Lake Huron.

A heavy layer of green loam surrounded the falls, like the softest carpet imaginable. Sunlight slanted in through the treetops, dappling the scene in a diffused, golden glow.

Backpack and clothing in a pile, soap in hand, I ventured into the frigid water. Making quick work of the process, I managed to scrub away most of the trail grime before dashing back to my pack and toweling off.

I spread the towel on the loam and lay there, letting the sun finish the drying process, wearing only the clothes I was born in. The sun warmed my puckered skin. Honeybees buzzed lazily nearby. The waves continued to roll gently against the beach. I breathed in. I breathed out. Time passed.

Something was nudging my left foot.

"I think he's alive," a voice said.

I opened my eyes. I was looking at a young guy about my age, standing over me, concern beetling his brows.

"Are you OK?" he asked.

"Yeah ... sure," I said, sleepily pushing myself into a sitting position.

A middle-aged woman walked up. She was fit, grey-haired, wearing a backpack and Vibram-soled boots.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi," she said, smiling. The young guy was also smiling.

I was missing something, but couldn't quite put my finger on what it might be. Then it came to me. I grabbed the towel and gathered it around me, covering what I could as fast as I could.

The woman turned her head long enough to allow me to climb back into my jeans and sweatshirt. Turns out she was a professor at Michigan State University, backpacking with her son. We wound up cooking and eating a lunch together, sharing stories of trails we'd hiked and places we'd seen.

Then we said goodbye, the prof and her son heading north, I south.

That was the last time I showered outdoors, so don't bother looking for me on the registry.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or incriminating stories of your own, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.

Nobody wants to be a nerd. And nobody, not even a slide-rule-using-electrical-tape-on-the-glasses-plaid-pants-white-shoes-wearing goofball, wants to think of himself as a nerd.

I'm not sure how nerds got such a bad rap. Sure, in high school they didn't get to date the hot cheerleaders, but so what? Most guys don't. Nerds are - traditionally - bad in sports. Again, so what? The captain of my high school's football team - circa 1976 - went on to play a little college ball, dropped out, and spent the rest of his adult life driving a waste pickup truck.

Bill Gates, on the other hand, owns Microsoft. Who got the last laugh there?

If not for nerds, there would be no personal computers, no cell phones, no graphing calculators (which supplanted slide rules in the pockets of nerds everywhere), no sci-fi conventions, no "Revenge of the Nerds" movies (which, after the first one, might not be such a bad thing, actually), no Scientific American magazine, no Al Gore ... you get the idea. The world's a richer place for nerds.

Yet nobody seems to want to be one, myself included.

This makes it all the harder to admit, that I am, in fact, a nerd. I know, I know ... I seem to be the veritable embodiment of cool, right? Right? Anyway, it turns out I'm not. I'm a nerd. 

I came by this realization a few weeks back during a conversation with a co-worker. The topic was, not surprisingly, that unassailable touchstone of nerd-dom, epitome of spazzishness, the geek Bible ... I'm talking, of course, about Star Trek. The original television series, with Captain James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy.

I've been watching Star Trek since I was a kid, when I would sprint all the way home from St. Isadore's Catholic School to catch re-runs on my parents black-and-white TV. In the years since, I have seen every episode about a million times.

At this point, I'm pretty sure I could perform a Vulcan mind meld, if I really had to. (If you have no idea what a Vulcan mind meld is, congratulations! Chances are you are not a nerd. Feel free to go to the back of the class and play cards while we geeks figure out a way to map the human genome using only pocket calculators.)

Anyway, the aforementioned co-worker and I shared bits from our favorite episodes, series trivia (The "T" in James T. Kirk stands for "Tiberius," but everybody knows that) and discussed the ramifications of warp drive from a physics perspective. It was while we were arguing over the possibility - or impossibility - of traveling faster than light that I experienced my "nerd epiphany."

The Lovely Mrs. Taylor - who has never seen an episode of Star Trek, never used a slide rule, and never worn a Hawaiian shirt - has for years been trying to tell me, gently, that I am, in fact, a nerd. I never believed her.

But here was the proof. In addition to knowing that "T" is for "Tiberius," I know that the first Vulcan mind meld was performed by Mr. Spock on a "Horta." I know that Martin Landou (Mission Impossible) was originally offered the role of Mr. Spock. I know that Captain Kirk never actually said, "Beam me up, Scotty," not in any episode.

In short, I know far too much about Star Trek not to be a nerd.

Driving home from the office, I got thinking about other things I enjoy, things that might verify or, better yet, disprove my nerd stature. The list was not encouraging.

I read Scientific American and Discover magazines. I own every book ever written by Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov. I go to the planetarium at least once a year, and don't get stoned beforehand. I have a Bluetooth headset for my cell phone and I sometimes use it in public.

I guess I wouldn't so much mind being a nerd, if I were better at it. But I'm strictly a plebe nerd. Prod it though I may, my brain refuses to understand any math more complicated than a checkbook register, and even that sometimes hurts my head. I've read Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time," but everything from Newton on might as well have been written in Sanskrit, for all the understanding I got out of it. My last real math class was ninth grade algebra, and I only passed that because Mr. Papke felt sorry for me.

So, not only am I a nerd, I'm the lowest kind of nerd, the "not smart" kind. I'm the nerd who's enthralled by the realization that "God" spelled backwards is "Dog."

I wonder if it's too late for me to get on the football team.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or arguments in favor of using a shuttlecraft instead of a transporter when visiting alien worlds, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.

My life to this point has been (knock on wood) great. It has had its ups and downs, like any life, but for the most part, I wouldn't change a thing. Maybe God likes me, maybe I have good karma from a virtuous, previous life, maybe I'm just lucky; whatever the reason, my life is, in a word, wonderful.

Granted, I'm not rich, powerful, or especially good looking. But I am happy, well-fed (obviously), and have a roof over my head. My kids are reasonably well adjusted and successful, my grandkids are doing well in school and The Lovely Mrs. Taylor is a far better wife than a yutz like me deserves.

Not a day goes by that I don't feel grateful for all life has given me. Which makes it all the more notable when I experience real, heartfelt disappointment.

In the past 50-some years of living, I have known only two great disappointments, not a bad record, in my opinion. But they were, indeed, great disappointments, and they came when I was least prepared to handle them; right around my twelfth Christmas.

They were (in reverse order): X-ray Specs, and - from page 495 of the 1967 Sears catalogue - the One-Man Field Patrol Helicopter.

The X-ray Specs need no explanation. Any boy who has ever read a Superman comic has at some point cut out the little coupon on the inside back cover and sent it, along with $1.15 plus postage and handling, to the X-ray Specs company, only to find out six-to-eight weeks later that they don't really let you see through the sweater of the girl who sits in front of you in homeroom.

X-ray Specs were invented, by the way, by the same guy who "invented" Sea-Monkeys, which now that I think of it, make three things in my life that have proved disappointing.

At any rate, the biggest disappointment, by far, was the One-Man Field Patrol Helicopter on page 495 of the 1967 Sears catalogue.

I wanted that thing so bad I couldn't sleep at night for thinking about it. A few years later, I would experience the same problem over Patty Tineman, but that was still some way off.

The One-Man Field Patrol Helicopter was a backpack-type unit sporting red and blue flashing lights, an acceleration lever and a 12-inch vertical rod sticking up from the top, upon which whirled a helicopter rotor. Drawing on the awesome power of two "D" batteries (not included) the lever controlled the rotor's speed and prevented the user from accidentally flying off into space.

The photo in the catalogue showed a kid about my age, decked out in an army helmet and kid-sized fatigues, obviously having the best day of his life as he soared above the clouds doing reconnaissance work for Uncle Sam.

The One-Man Field Patrol Helicopter sold for $8.99 - real money in those days, especially for Catholic families with lots of kids, like mine. Still, I campaigned for that toy harder than Nixon campaigned for the Presidency. I left notes for my folks, I cleaned my room without being asked, I didn't beat up my two younger brothers for weeks!

My old man tried to tell me the One-Man Field Patrol Helicopter wouldn't really get me airborne, but I was having none of that. Of course the people at Sears didn't want parents to know it really worked! If they did, no kid would ever get one, for cryin' out loud.

Come Christmas morning, there was no One-Man Field Patrol Helicopter under the tree. I never did get one.

But now I'm an adult, with my own money, such as it is. I don't know if they still make the One-Man Field Patrol Helicopter, but I'm going to find out. Sure, I weigh about three times what I did in 1967, but I know a little bit about electricity. I'm sure I can figure out a way to boost the power by wiring a couple extra "D" batteries into the thing.

So come Christmas morning, if you hear a buzzing overhead, don't freak out. It's just me doing reconnaissance work for Uncle Sam.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or lessons in aerodynamics, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.

Do you remember being in love? Not the cozy, "Where's the remote, honey?" love of marriage. Nor the warm, abiding friendship/love of old age. Nor even the intense, passionate love of the wedding night. I'm talking about the sort of love that makes you crazy, that fills up your heart and mind to the point that there's no room left in either for anything else; the kind of love you only experience once in your life. In eighth grade.

I don't know if girls go through this the same way boys do. In truth, I don't know much about girls and any guy who thinks he does is kidding himself.

But guys, myself included, fall madly, blindly in love, at least once; some in seventh grade, some not until ninth ... but most in eighth.

Maybe that's when guys begin to realize its possible girls don't have cooties, after all. That they can be ... what? ... pleasant? Nice? Sweet? And, dare I say it? They can be ... girlfriends. Yes, that's the word. Not one you want to hear your best friend utter as you sit around drinking Cokes after a pickup game of softball. Because, once said, it can never be unsaid.

Once said, everything changes. Once girls enter the picture, conversation no longer revolves around Spiderman and first basemen, jack knives and chasing ants with a magnifying glass. Once the "G" word enters your vocabulary, a new phase of life begins and the old is forever lost, a dim memory of simpler times.

Eighth-grade love has been on my mind the past couple days because of a note I found while raking leaves in the front yard. Why I bothered to pick up a crumpled, soggy piece of paper, I couldn't tell you, but I did.

On it was written a note from an unnamed boy to a girl named Jennifer. Judging by the handwriting, the note's love-struck author was, I'd guess, an eighth-grader.

Our young Romeo begins his missive cautiously but thoughtfully, with "Dear Jennifer." See, already he has managed to slip the word "Dear" in there, though in a non-committal manner, just in case Jennifer rebukes his advances.

He then tosses out a little small talk: "Hello!" he writes. "What's up? Not much here."

Whew! OK, the ice is broken. Time to move ahead to the mushy stuff: "Just sitting in class thinking about you." He might be thinking Jennifer's a geek; so far, our author can back out safely if he really has to.

"Sorry to bother you again, but it's important." Uh-oh, he's edging up to it now: "I need to know if you like me or not. Because I really like you a lot."

Too late. The words are out there now. Still, if things go really bad, our young Lothario can claim he was setting Jennifer up for some elaborate, and preferably cruel, joke.

But he goes on: "I think about you all the time. I would really like to be your boyfriend."

That's it, he's committed. I've seen marriages based on less devotion. Been in a couple, in fact.

Still, our hero continues: "Will you think about what I just said? Maybe we can talk after school today." He's laid it on the line now. His fate, his self-esteem, his very essence, has been placed trustingly in Jennifer's as-yet-unheld hands.

Young Romeo wraps up his thoughts with a tender "Cya later. With love," - and here you have to really admire his daring - "Your undercover lover!"

In a postscript, he sums up his feelings with a simple "Will you be my girlfriend?" followed by the obligatory check boxes indicating either YES or NO.

Neither was checked. So what happened, I wonder. Did Jennifer get the letter and simply toss it, along with Romeo's feelings? Did Romeo chicken out and throw the letter away without delivering it? Did Jennifer come out of school with some other guy carrying her books?

Or - and this is what I prefer to believe - did Jennifer return the letter personally, along with a long note declaring her own undying love?

While our young author's note may not have transcended the poetic lyricism of "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Jennifer the sun," it still contained more honest, heartfelt emotion than I've seen in a while.

And it helped me remember that time in my own life, before mortgages and parent-teacher conferences, when love had free reign and every thought and action was a blind, terrifying leap of faith into a great, dark unknown.

Be kind, Jennifer. Be kind.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or hints on romancing the ladies, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.